Arizona lawmakers are alive today because their parents or grandparents were not gullible.

They trusted science.

Arizona lawmakers are alive today because the lawmakers running the state legislatures where they grew up were not gullible, and trusted science.

So, there were rules in place saying that before children were admitted to public school, they had to be vaccinated against polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox, maybe more.

Here’s why: Vaccines WORK.

Vaccines protect children from unseen dangers, and they protect those in vulnerable health situations from the unvaccinated.

Newborns are at risk, for example. And those who are medically unable to take vaccines. And those with compromised or weakened immune systems, like cancer patients.

And pregnant women.

Five years ago, when the anti-vaccine fanatics began to have an impact on gullible parents, a woman from Sun City West named Carole Lee wrote a letter to the editor of The Arizona Republic. It read:

“I cannot understand why any parent would decide not to vaccinate their child.

“In the mid-1960s a measles pandemic caught me. I........

© Arizona Republic